Urban Development in India

Indian diaspora has had a complex and multifaceted role in catalyzing justifying and promoting a transformed urban landscape in India. Focussing on Kolkata/ Calcutta this book analyses the changing landscapes over the past two decades of one of the worldâs most fascinating and iconic cities. Previously better known due to its post-Independence decline into overcrowded poverty pollution and despair in recent years it has experience a revitalization that echoes Indiaâs renaissance as a whole in the new millennium. This book weaves together narratives of migration and diasporas postmodern developmentalism and neoliberal urbanism and identity and belonging in the Global South. It examines the rise of middle-class environmental initiatives and Kolkataâs attempts to reclaim its earlier global status. It suggests that a form of global gentrification is taking place through which people and place are being fundamentally restructured. Based on a decadeâs worth of field research and investigation in multiple sites - metropolitan centers connected by long histories of empire migration economy and culture - it employs a multi-methods approach and uses ethnographic semi-structured interviews as well as archival research for much of the empirical data collected. Addressing urban change and policies as well as spatial and discoursive transformations that are occurring in India it will be of interest to researchers in the field of urban geography urban and regional planning environmental studies diaspora studies and South Asian studies. . Language: English